I think I forgot to mention in my last few emails that I am the designated driver this transfer. This isnt a super difficult place to drive in, but its still new and different, and I don't know my way everywhere, and before this transfer I hadn't driven in like 2 months straight. Poor Elder Henderson has to be my navigator, and he gets distracted a lot so I get a lot of directions late. I'd have him just drive, and he would love that a lot, but... I tried that once and he is even scarier a driver than I am. So putting up with driving here is more of a life preservation thing than a fun thing haha. :P

Had our first district meeting with a new district in Southaven, Mississippi! We talked about being led by the spirit, and creating a teaching environment conducive to teaching by the spirit, which was really good. We then went on exchanges, and Elder Jennings, one of our zone/district leaders, came with me to Collierville, and we succeeded in reaching our goal of inviting 10 people to take the lessons from us! We got 2 return appointments out of the deal, so it was a good exchange! Plus, I got my first "GET OFF MY PORCH!" So that was awesome haha.

I just kinda laughed that off, especially since she preceded that by telling us she was a born-again Christian, while another guy's neighbor full on called him a Satanist and he politely told us he wasn't interested and to have a great rest of our day. :) the irony, right?

Wednesday was my first book's 6th birthday. Crazytown. On Wednesday, we moved our one baptismal date with Caroline back to be not on labor day weekend. She is doing super well, going as far as reading Isaiah side-to-side with the Book of Mormon, and doing the "additional studies" in the back of the pamphlets. She is so awesome. She shared a story from church on Sunday where the teacher decided to teach from a talk by Elder Holland in 2006, rather than the scheduled lesson outline. Turned out that talk on managing burdens was just what Caroline needed to hear after the week she had had. How cool is that little miracle? God cares about us all individually, and he shows that I so many cool little ways.

Here are two more of those other little ways I saw this week.

1. Last week we helped a ward member move one of their pieces of furniture into the truck of a person buying it from them. We then called the missionaries where the buyers lived and had them ready to help them unload the thing when they got back. It took maybe 10 minutes, and the lady tried to pay us for the help haha. We got a text from the member a few days later sharing a Facebook post from the lady who we had helped, who I guess was just so amazed by our help that she bragged about Mormons on Facebook. It was pretty cool.

2. This is my favorite story this week. We have been trying to find new people to teach, which is not going super well, honestly. And that gets pretty disheartening. It's not even that people aren't interested, it's that they aren't even home or opening the door. After a particularly seemingly fruitless day of tracting, I was looking at the sidewalk and saw somebody's temple recommend! It came to me that the youth were doing a temple trip to do baptisms for deceased ancestors today. But without their temple recommend, they weren't going to be able to go in. We hurried back to the car, and drove to the church as fast as the little speed monitor thing would let us. We got there in time to give the girl her temple recommend before they left.

Idk, that taught me a couple things. When we feel inspired to be in a certain area at a certain time, maybe it's not because our next golden investigator is going to be there. But there is a reason, and God uses us for a lot of things! Secondly, I think whoever she was baptized on behalf of in the temple that day, was really eager to receive that ordinance. And our Heavenly Father wanted to make sure that no lost temple recommend would keep that from happening. So he used his servants the missionaries to make sure it would happen. So that was a cool thing that helped me recognize that Heavenly Father is guiding us.

And now, the food section of the weekly email.

Brother Boggs has spoiled us too much this week, I feel bad.On Friday, we went to a Hibachi grill, and had some incredible fried rice, chicken, shrimp, and vegetables, cooked on this giant grill in the middle of a table by a master chef who would light things on fire and throw knives around and all that. It was sooo good.

On Saturday, he had us over for most of the day to make jalapeno poppers and this strawberry shortcake roulade dessert for the ward social after church tomorrow. That was really fun and now I have a good jalapeno poppers recipe up my sleeve.

After that, he took us to this Italian restaurant in the back of an antique mall. I'd seen it before on p days, but hadn't looked at the menu or anything. I kinda assumed, since it was in the back of an antique mall it wouldn't be too spendy. After some killer manicotti and other pasta, he told us that was 2 nights in a row where the check had been over 100$. Um! Henderson and I told him we would do the McDonald's dollar menu for the remaining times we went out with him haha.

And then on Sunday, after the ward social/potluck, we made another dessert from scratch (lemon zucchini, very good) and cooked up giant steaks and baked potatoes and a baguette w dippy.

Constant states of being a missionary: tired, and hate-yourself-full. It's a good thing we do a lot of walking.

Funny story time: the Jehovah's Witnesses knocked on our door while we were doing studies haha. They gave us a flyer invite to the 2017 "Convention of Jehovah's Witnesses." I was happy to see we made them look a little nervous haha. But we were nice and accepted the flyer and they moved on before we could give them a pamphlet of our own. We cracked up once the door closed haha.

The Sinclairs, some friends of mine from back home, sent a thermos water bottle that has been awesome this week. Thank you so much!!

This week I was also extra thankful for the sacrament. I read Moroni 10:33 while it was being passed to the congregation, which talks about how we can be sanctified through Christ and become "without spot." That was just really comforting to me and helped motivate me to do better this next week!

So that's this week! It's felt kinda slower, but there have been enough little miracles that help me know we are on the right track. Here's to another great week! Love you all!

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Serving A Mission!

What's all this about? As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, it is expected of me that I will serve a two-year mission. (And yeah, the "riding bikes and wearing nametags and knocking on doors" kind of mission.) But this isn't something I'm doing because it's expected of me... I'm doing this because the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ has blessed my life SO much, in SO many ways. I can't think of a greater honor or responsibility than being able to play a part in someone's story of finding and enjoying these blessings, too.